Latest Gear

The guys at Orange Amplification have just posted a series of new demo videos featuring guitarist Monte Pittman. From Orange: "Monte Pittman has just come out of the studio where he has been recording a series of high-quality videos demonstrating all Orange Amplification products. Monte has also just finished recording his third album, The Power of Three. To celebrate, Orange is debuting five of his most metal video demos!"

Paul Reed Smith guitar’s new permanent home at the Met, thanks to Warren and Kateryna Esanu, is celebrated by the public and dignitaries with a performance demonstration by John McLaughlin in the Met’s Temple of Dendur in The Sackler Wing. On October 7, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City accepted a PRS guitar into its permanent collection.

IK Multimedia has introduced the iRig BlueBoard, a new wireless MIDI pedalboard for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Mac that gives guitarists, bassists, vocalists and keyboard players hands-free wireless control of mobile and Mac music apps. The iRig BlueBoard is now available from musical instrument and electronics retailers worldwide.

In this new video created and posted by Roland, Richie Kotzen (Poison, Mr. Big, the Winery Dogs) demonstrates the Roland CUBE Lite guitar amplifier. He also discusses how he uses it with the CUBE JAM app to prepare for performing live on tour.

There are many different shades of the Marshall sound, but every Marshall amp—from the Plexi through the JCM800 and Jubilee to the latest JVM models—delivers a certain instantly identifiable quality of tone, crunch and distortion.

Rock stars like Eric Clapton, Slash and Billy Gibbons inspire many custom guitar builders to make instruments, but William Gelvin’s Dice OPS guitar was influenced by an entirely different kind of celebrity: comedian Andrew Dice Clay. “I made a comment to Dice about him being a rock and roll comedian,” Gelvin says.

Despite its diminutive size, Martin Guitar’s new Custom Shop LX1E Ed Sheeran Signature Edition guitar comes with several plusses. First there’s the + logo on the headstock and solid sapele top, a reference to the title of the English singer-songwriter’s Platinum-selling 2011 album, which spawned the mega-hits “Lego House,” “The A Team,” “Drunk” and “Give Me Love.”

Truth be told, Leo Fender never intended for the amp to get such an overdriven sound. He much preferred the clean twang of country and Hawaiian lap steels. But guys like Neil Young, Joe Walsh, Eric Clapton and Billy Gibbons had other plans: Crank these low-watt wonders wide open!

Railhammer has released its new Gnarly 90 pickup, which features P90 tone in a standard humbucker-size box. The Gnarly 90 is designed to capture the tone of a vintage P90 and offer the advantages of Railhammer's rail/pole configuration. Using 44-gauge wire and dual alnico 5 magnets, the tone has the signature lower mid whine and raw attack typical of a classic P90.